Art in Review; Jim Goldberg -- 'Two Stories'

By Ken Johnson

Jan. 7, 2005

Pace/MacGill 32 East 57th Street, Manhattan Through Jan. 29

One postmodernist response to Modernist photography has been to add captions, as Duane Michals, for example, has done. In more of a social documentarian vein, Jim Goldberg had the subjects of his pictures write their thoughts on the prints, in a series called "Rich and Poor" that he made in the late 1970's and early 80's. (The series was first exhibited 20 years ago at the Museum of Modern Art in a three-person show with Robert Adams and Joel Sternfeld.)

Each black-and-white picture portrays a rich or poor person, couple or family. What we learn about the experience of wealth or poverty, however, is less compelling than the often poignant sense of a person that comes from the combination of word and image.

On a portrait of an evidently affluent older couple, the man has written the chilling words: "My wife is acceptable. Our relationship is satisfactory." She observes that he is "a private person who is not demonstrative of his affection" and that "I accept him as he is."

Words on the portrait of a shirtless, bearded and presumably poor man and his small son read: "I love David. But he is too fragile for a rough father like me."

A series also on view, called "Another Story" and dated 1974-2004, reflects the postmodernist device of treating the photograph as an object -- an artifact or a memento. Mr. Goldberg has attached dozens of pictures of various kinds and sizes to wide sheets of cream-colored mat board, creating a wraparound, diaristic bulletin board. Here documentary transparency is unfortunately sacrificed for obscurely personal poetic evocation. KEN JOHNSON